Anger from voice actors as NSFW mods use AI deepfakes to replicate their voices: 'This is NOT okay.'

Source via PCGamer
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A slew of pornographic mods on the Nexus Mods website has caused mounting anger in the voice acting community. As reported by Gamesradar, Twitter user Robbie92_ has posted a list of Skyrim voice actors who have had their voices used against their will for NSFW mods, earlier this week.

These actors include April Stewart, who in addition to multiple characters in Skyrim, is the voice of Petra Venj in Destiny 2 and Jessamine Kaldwin in Dishonoured 2; Jon Curry, who voiced Zevran in Dragon Age: Origins; and Susan Eisenberg, who has voiced Wonder Woman in both animation and video games since 2001.

The National Association of Voice Actors tweeted in response: "The damage to voice actors and game companies by AI and synthetic voices is real and tangible," proceeding to tag both Bethesda Studios and Zenimax Online, writing: "voice actors don't have the legal ability to fight this, but you can help."

The wider voice acting community has also rallied to decry the mods. Linsay Rousseau of Transformers: War for Cybertron, Deathloop, and Fallout 76 quote tweeted: "Voice Actors don't consent to this. If you're using these mods, you're stealing & abusing our work."

Jennifer Hale, voice of Commander Shepard in the Mass Effect Series, also tweeted: "to make this CRYSTAL clear: if you do not have written permission to use my voice, you DO NOT HAVE PERMISSION to use my voice, including AI use."

Meanwhile Abbey Veffer, who voices a host of characters in The Elder Scrolls Online and Genshin Impact, wrote: "I do not, and never will, consent to my voice being used for AI synthesis, cloning, deepfakes, etc. This is NOT okay."

Robbie92_ has also been doing considerable work via a google document to assemble a list of mods "that use AI cloning to produce non-consensual pornographic content" for the purposes of spreading awareness and reporting them, an exhaustive task that April Stewart thanked them for. "The Google doc was particularly helpful when I contacted my agent and also requested the content be taken down."

I reached out to Robbie92_ to ask about their work, and I'll update this article if I hear back from them.

Voice actors clearly shouldn't have to spend hours of their day browsing Nexus Mods just to protect themselves, and I can't even imagine the amount of time, money, and labour that would need to be poured into fighting this kind of AI use en-masse, and Nexus Mods' current attitude towards AI-generated work on their platform doesn't make matters easier.

They've stated these mods "may be removed if we receive a credible complaint from an affected creator/rights holder", but considering there's an entire live document dedicated to tracking these things, I can't see that being a satisfying solution for anybody involved.

 

[like_shutup_&_drive_scoob]

It's gross and cringe.
If an actress directly requests her VOICE not be used for your weird porn then I side with them.

As someone who is a big fan of voice acting... I just think it's horrible if the person directly says I do not want this I never said this and people jeer at them.

They're not a stupid youtuber or lolcow- they just act out lines in games and shit to entertain us. There's not justifiable reason to not respect their wishes other then being a perpetual coomer.

It's one of those rare moments when I'm gonna side with the leftists on this.

 

[There Is Light At The End]

Didn't people already make Skyrim voice edited videos? Oh heres one.

Yeah, but m4nsl3yer showed how it's done. It took 2 hours or so. Deepfake just trivialises it, just train your model and boom - ready. Only minor manual tweaking needed

 

[Spud]

It's gross and cringe.
If an actress directly requests her VOICE not be used for your weird porn then I side with them.
As someone who is a big fan of voice acting... I just think it's horrible if the person directly says I do not want this I never said this and people jeer at them.
They're not a stupid youtuber or lolcow- they just act out lines in games and shit to entertain us. There's not justifiable reason to not respect their wishes other then being a perpetual coomer.
It's one of those rare moments when I'm gonna side with the leftists on this.

I have no sympathies for these people because they want to be recognized and celebrated on the Internet for being the voice of a character. You willingly put your voice out there and there are consequences to that. These are the same people who believe that because they voice a character for vidya that means copyright laws should be given more authority to stop the average joe making them say nigger or I like big booty bitches. This is the blow to the ego they deserve, they are actors, literal scum is better moral character than an actor and for good reason

 

[Gravityqueen4life]

You are missing out on the best ones. Joshua Graham reads the Bible.

The best was hearing Joshua Graham say: "And I know the blasphemy of them that say they are Jews, and are not, but are the Synagogue of Satan"
The most replayed portion of that video. LMAO!

timestamp?

It's gross and cringe.
If an actress directly requests her VOICE not be used for your weird porn then I side with them.

As someone who is a big fan of voice acting... I just think it's horrible if the person directly says I do not want this I never said this and people jeer at them.

They're not a stupid youtuber or lolcow- they just act out lines in games and shit to entertain us. There's not justifiable reason to not respect their wishes other then being a perpetual coomer.

It's one of those rare moments when I'm gonna side with the leftists on this.

thanks to twitter, i know that most voice actors would not even piss on me if i was set on fire. its always a great time to make fun of someone who thinks they hot shit and watch them have melt down.

speaking of voice actors having a melt down on the AI question...




So Erica Linebeck, the VA for Futaba in Persona 5 and Asahi for SMT IV: Apocolyse got cyberbullied so hard she DFE'd her twitter.
The reason? Someone using her voice put it through an AI and made a cover of Welcome To the Internet. She allegedly politely asked them to take it down, but stans of hers cyberbullied her so hard she deleted her shit.

here is the video btw.

 

[thunderous ball lightning]

I'm going to sympathize with the voice actors because ya know, cloning someone else's voice without their consent is unethical. imagine if your voice is being cloned for disgusting shit. but when I see this

If you're using these mods, you're stealing & abusing our work

then I started becoming pessimistic over these voice actors. really? a basic biological feature is an intellectual property now? .

 

[The Bovinian Derivative]

I wouldn't want my voice to be used for anything like this either. With that said VAs can ask for eye watering amount of money for NSFW works. I saw an sfm animator once asking for over $1.5K in donations for a chick to basically moan into the mic for 20 mins. People are naturally trying to work around that and this is the result.

 

[Cuckoman]

The danger to them is if the AI is using a deep enough sample pool, it's no longer copying them or their voice. It's just taking their jobs.

If your job is literally just reading lines of text off a piece of paper into a microphone, maybe your job isn't all that vital after all and it really should be replaced by a computer?
That would free them up to do something actually useful for society instead, like picking strawberries at a farm and putting them into small containers.

 

[Snekposter]

If your job is literally just reading lines of text off a piece of paper into a microphone, maybe your job isn't all that vital after all and it really should be replaced by a computer?
That would free them up to do something actually useful for society instead, like picking strawberries at a farm and putting them into small containers.

Or, hear me out, we can take these people with excellent voice acting talents and pay them to help directly generate lines for AI and work with the AI programmers to create the best match, and then they can be insufferable cunts, copyright that, and sue anyone who breaches copyright by creating their own AI model of their voice.

 

[Duke Nukem]

Seriously what's with coomers and Bethesda games? But if it pisses off the devs go for it, these people need to be trolled into Oblivion.

 

[Omen_Sulk]

It's gross and cringe.
If an actress directly requests her VOICE not be used for your weird porn then I side with them.

As someone who is a big fan of voice acting... I just think it's horrible if the person directly says I do not want this I never said this and people jeer at them.

They're not a stupid youtuber or lolcow- they just act out lines in games and shit to entertain us. There's not justifiable reason to not respect their wishes other then being a perpetual coomer.

It's one of those rare moments when I'm gonna side with the leftists on this.

I'm sorry it's the only way to get the original Ellen Page back.



They already hacked her bodyscan from the videogame.

Spoiler

For some reason guys in the videogame industry have an obsession with Ellen Page.

 

[Hillary Clinton's Ass]

Damn. I've seen crack addicts more healthy than her. HRT, never once.

 

[Apochrypha]

Sneed and cope. Like any actor, you have rendered yourself a product, and like any product people have the right to buy sell and use your voice in any way they so please. Get fucked and find a better career if you don't like it. Granted the Nexus mod page is ran by egoists and trannies so of course they'll get their way and have everything shut down.

I've never been on the side of modders or their cult followings and the Nexus modding community is filled with weird coom shit that I don't enjoy, but acting is a joke of a career and AI is a MUCH cheaper and reliable alternative to hiring voice actors, amateur or otherwise. When you hire people for your work, especially if you're a part of a modding "team," you never meet your deadlines because the modding scene is filled with lazy fucks who don't produce good work in a timely manner and abandon project like unwanted prom babies.

 

[greenthrowaway]

Too bad you fucks are hysterical about a new most evil thing in the world every month, that anything legitimate suffers from the boy that cried wolf. Coomers vs actors? I don’t feel the need to defend either.

 

[Omen_Sulk]

Sneed and cope. Like any actor, you have rendered yourself a product, and like any product people have the right to buy sell and use your voice in any way they so please.

Don't they usually sell themselves for roles anyway?

 

[pwnest injun]

I agree, we should not be using AI to deepfake April Stewart in pornographic situations.

We should only use AI to deepfake April Stewart saying the most despicably racist things imaginable, as AI intended.

Some people call it junk, but I call them niggers.

 

[Cuckoman]

I'm sorry it's the only way to get the original Ellen Page back.

Ellen Page is a cunt. The only way I would like to see her back would be if someone made a sex-doll of her and use AI to generate her voice saying things like
"No, please stop, I don't want to", "you are hurting me" and crying. Then to make her silent there are sensors in the dolls nech so if you choke the doll real hard it goes silent.
Then I would market and sell it to perverts on the internet.
I would only accept crypto as payment.

As a final touch I would have a guillotine mounted in the dolls vagina as a final surprise to the faggots that bought the rape-doll.
Doll would be internet connected, of course, and have hidden cameras in the dolls eyes. When the surprise guillotine trap is sprung, pictures/videos of the guy would be automatically livestreamed to youtube for us to laugh at.

It would blow woke peoples mind. Should they be shocked and very upset that a sex-doll encouraging rape was sold on the dark-web or should they celebrate that it involuntarily turned rapists into trannies?

 

[Omen_Sulk]

Ellen Page is a cunt. The only way I would like to see her back would be if someone made a sex-doll of her and use AI to generate her voice saying things like
"No, please stop, I don't want to", "you are hurting me" and crying.

Well I already heard from /v/ they used her 3d model for porn, so they are halfway there.

Spoiler

 

[moocow]

They're scared shitless of being trivially replaced, especially since random internet goofballs can churn out astonishingly good AI simulations of their voices, characters and even inflexions in a matter of hours.

AI voices don't flub lines, come in drunk, argue with people on twitter, argue with the director or writers, refuse to do lines they find "offensive," make sexual harassment accusations, go on strike or try to get each other fired. They don't complain a year after a product is released that they were forced to work in a hostile work environment, they don't express regret five years later that they said some benign word that later becomes fashionable to hate, and they don't shit-talk the staff they worked with after the fact either.

With a bit of practice, a developer can learn how to get consistently good results from AI voices -- including how to deal with little quirks and pronunciation mistakes that pop in here and there -- and suddenly they can rapidly iterate on dialogue without dealing with prima-donna voice actors or waiting for that production flow to yield results to test within the game.

And best of all, if they can get the generation of AI voices optimized enough to just ship a voice engine and dialogue lines with the game instead of the actual audio, it would also help shrink ever-exploding game file sizes since they won't be shipping tens of gigabytes of pre-recorded dialogue in a dozen languages anymore, so it'd even be a boon to developers, distributors, online platforms, ISPs and end-users to boot.

 

[Crescent Fresh]

They're scared shitless of being trivially replaced, especially since random internet goofballs can churn out astonishingly good AI simulations of their voices, characters and even inflexions in a matter of hours.

AI voices don't flub lines, come in drunk, argue with people on twitter, argue with the director or writers, refuse to do lines they find "offensive," make sexual harassment accusations, go on strike or try to get each other fired. They don't complain a year after a product is released that they were forced to work in a hostile work environment, they don't express regret five years later that they said some benign word that later becomes fashionable to hate, and they don't shit-talk the staff they worked with after the fact either.

With a bit of practice, a developer can learn how to get consistently good results from AI voices -- including how to deal with little quirks and pronunciation mistakes that pop in here and there -- and suddenly they can rapidly iterate on dialogue without dealing with prima-donna voice actors or waiting for that production flow to yield results to test within the game.

And best of all, if they can get the generation of AI voices optimized enough to just ship a voice engine and dialogue lines with the game instead of the actual audio, it would also help shrink ever-exploding game file sizes since they won't be shipping tens of gigabytes of pre-recorded dialogue in a dozen languages anymore, so it'd even be a boon to developers, distributors, online platforms, ISPs and end-users to boot.

The issue is, AI isn’t nearly good enough at inflections yet. AI alone isn’t anywhere close to replacing voice acting.

AI alone.

Why the fuck would you pay big money for an actually known actor when you, yes you, can just use their voice (or in commercial projects, a voice similar enough) and deliver the needed lines yourself, using AI to mask your voice into theirs?

Oh, you’re bad at voice acting? Well, just find someone else to do it, again at only a fraction of the old big-name cost.

There’s a chance AI might get there eventually where they can pull off the needed delivery totally on their own, yet even with what there is now they’ve made the task of voice acting significantly cheaper as you can get one or two people (male and female actors at most) to do an entire game’s worth of voices, and it no longer matters who they are as they can just be anyone you want instead.

 

[Tanner Glass]

It's gross and cringe.
If an actress directly requests her VOICE not be used for your weird porn then I side with them.

As someone who is a big fan of voice acting... I just think it's horrible if the person directly says I do not want this I never said this and people jeer at them.

They're not a stupid youtuber or lolcow- they just act out lines in games and shit to entertain us. There's not justifiable reason to not respect their wishes other then being a perpetual coomer.

It's one of those rare moments when I'm gonna side with the leftists on this.

Would it be different for you if it was a different person doing an impression of the character? What if it wasn't porn, but a comedy show like SNL?

Where do you actually draw the line?